Suwarro is a special place. Getting to Suwarro seemed like a landmark because it is isolated beautiful and far from civilization giving one the feeling of being very far away. We felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. There was pristine water and thousands of black tip sharks that we saw every couple of minutes swimming around the boat. We were anchored behind is the largest of the islands, called Anchorage Island. The atoll itself is roughly 5-8 miles in diameter. The largest island where the ranger and his assistant live, is Anchorage island. They stay about six months or so only during the winter months. They are employed by the Cook Islands government to manage the area checking in traveling yachts, to collect fees, to pick up garbage, and to keeping track of the wildlife. Both live in a small shack that has an gasoline generator but little or no gasoline. They have a large freezer filled with fish and a aluminum skiff powered by an outboard engine. The men live in a rudimentary room. They made themselves a still to make beer and fish for food but much of their food comes from the traveling yachts. They arrange tours of the area for which they charge both money and fuel which is how they get enough gasoline for their freezer and outboard. We understand that the Cook Islands government doesn't not supply them with regular shipments of fuel or food and the only way these rangers get by is with assistance from the cruisers.

They host Friday night Potluck dinners where the rangers bring the fish and crabs and the cruisers bring the rest including beer! They have a big get together after eating dinner to feed the sharks all of the remains of the fish that was caught for dinner. The time we went, the ranger's assistant was thoroughly inebriated when he stepped into the water and then while standing on a rock dumped several pails of fish guts into the water. The waiting sharks went wild! One pail he accidentally dumped onto his foot and for a moment I was sure he would be attacked but the sharks knew who fed them and left him alone. He even reached into the water and grabbed a 4 foot long shark by the tail and threw it towards the crowd of onlookers standing on the beach myself included. It made for some interesting pictures for those who had brought their cameras!

After several days of resting, snorkeling and boat work I decided it was time to clean the prop on Always Saturday. Normally I don't have to work up courage to do this as it requires scuba air and maybe 30 minutes of work but with all these "harmless" sharks it was more difficult to jump into the water! It seems that many were curious as Nancy reported seeing several investigating the boat but they kept their distance and I did my work. Of course, I saw several swimming but none too close!

After the first week, we were getting ready to head out to Samoa but the weather was predicted to get heavy with rain so we decided to honker down and wait for a better weather window. We reset out anchor and supported the chain with some pearl mooring buoys we acquired for just that purpose. The intent was to keep the chain floating off the bottom so it wouldn't foul the coral heads below. The weather did act up and for several days most people stayed pretty much on their own boats riding out the wind and rain. No one dragged their anchor and finally the sun came out and many including us made preparations to leave.

The next morning we raised our anchor only to find that it was fouled around a coral head despite our efforts. Normally this can be a real problem but by powering the boat to one side (or the other) the chain was dragged away from the coral and the buoys did the rest by floating the chain up off and clear. Within five minutes of raising anchor as we were motoring out of the harbor we got hit with a squall of about 35 knots losing much of our visibility temporarily. Fortunately, it didn't last too long and we continued our departure without event.

It was still quite windy on the outside and the seas were about 9 feet so we did some rocking and rolling but since we were heading downwind we quickly built up boat speed and off we went towards American Samoa. The first two days were not too bad… we were moving fast in the right direction but the boat motion took some adjusting too as we had lost our sea legs in the harbor. The third day was our worst in a while as we had to deal with about 30 hours of intermittent squalls requiring frequent sail changes so by the time we arrived in Pago Pago, Am. Samoa we had completed what we hope will be our worst short passage.

Samoa is beautiful and much of it is American National Park with hiking and beautifully maintained trails. The road work is definitely made in America with very expensive looking concrete embankments along the coast to protect the coast road. Why America has spent so much here is unclear to me. Clearly during WWII Samoa was acquired to support an air base needed to protect and defend Guadalcanal. The Samoans are the most obese population we have yet encountered even larger than the French Polynesians in the Marquessa Islands. Everyone is huge. American fast food is available everywhere and it seems to be a cultural tendency.

Our trip to American Samoa was mainly to provision for the remaining few months of our Pacific passage. We did go on a tour of the Starkist Tuna Canning factory and Nancy will tell you all about that unusual experience in a later post

From the Crew of Always Saturday